March 25, 2015 by Lorry Schoenly

Even those of us who love correctional nursing know it is a tough specialty. Earlier posts discussed the reasons we need to take care of ourselves, and the issues of secondary traumatization and moral distress. This last post in the Correctional Nurse Self-Care series is about compassion fatigue.

Although some sources consider compassion fatigue and secondary traumatization to be similar concepts, they have different root causes. Secondary trauma comes from absorbing the stress of the traumatic experiences of our patients. It is a taking upon ourselves the weight of another’s past and present life experience and feeling the physical, psychological, and emotional results. Compassion fatigue, on the other hand, is the giving of ourselves to others to the point of depletion repetitively without adequate recovery. The combination of secondary trauma, moral distress, and compassion fatigue can be a deadly cocktail for correctional nurses. Self-care intervention is needed to maintain a healthy equilibrium. please go to CorrectionalNurse.net to read the full article.